This picture is one of our classes in Águas Lindas...the morning class. Not all of the students were here this day. It was taken in one of the new classrooms that got opened up in the big building. It is so nice to have an actual schoolroom now! And they put lights in too, so it isn't as dark as it was before. The girl in the blue beside me is pregnant, and Friday was her last day coming to English. She is due in July, and she looked absolutely tired and worn out...so I think she's ready to stay at home until she has her baby. She said if it is a girl she will name it "Sol", which means "sun" in Portuguese. I think that is a beautiful name.
I went to the funnest party on Saturday night...I would have put some pictures on for you, but Andréa hasn't downloaded them on the computer yet. But first I have to explain some more culture stuff. There in Canada and US, it's special when a girl turns 16, and they call it "Sweet Sixteen". However, here in Brasil, the special age is 15, and it's a really big deal. I don't know how the poorer people celebrate, but rich people give huge parties for their daughters, and if they don't give parties, they send them on a trip, usually to DisneyWorld in Florida.
So on Saturday, Andréa, her boyfriend, students from the English school and Andreia the secretary at the school went to one of these parties for one of the girls who goes to the school.
The party started at 10PM, but officially the girl can't show herself until midnight, for some reason. Before she came downstairs all the guests enjoyed themselves to the food, and a live band. It was fun. The food they had was so good...the only thing I had was a crepe with strawberries and kiwis,and ice cream and whipped cream to top it all off. There were other fruit to put in it. But their was also a different crepe which they call "sal"(the first one was "doce"), and it had tomatoes, cheese, meat, and other stuff. SOOOOO good. There was so much other food too. The 3 guys that she invited from her class are all about 15 years old, and they are so incredibly funny. They kept us laughing all night.
When it turned midnight, Flávia arrived in a beautiful white dress, like that of a bride. She was so beautiful with her hair all done up so beautifully.
She was in an upstairs room of this event place, and her parents were waiting to greet her at the bottom of the stairs. They had so many camera people and photography lights everywhere, but it is a special event so they wanted it to be perfect. When they all went to the front, there were a few speeches, and her dad sang a song for her, and her parents gave her a ring. Even the guy she liked sang a song to her. It was beautiful. After that everything went back to normal and they served dinner(yeah, at 12:30 in the "madrugada", the wee hours of the morning...I'm telling ya, these Brasilians sure keep weird hours!) The band started up again, and they played some forró...Andréa's boyfriend was the only guy at our table who really knows how to dance forró, so all of us girls wanted to dance with him. Unfortunately, I never got to. Oh well! Then many people went up to the front after they were finished playing forró, and they started doing some real good dance music. Then they played some techno music, and honestly, I think I danced for 2 hours straight! It was so much fun, and even funner when you have a whole bunch of friends to dance with like that. They started giving out those light up bracelets and feather boas and funny glasses, and we got tons of pictures. When she downloads them I will post some of them on here...they're hilarious! We went home at about 3:30 in the morning, and I still wanted to dance...did I mention how much I love to dance??? It's great at parties like these because they're fun, like big huge birthday parties, and there was confetti and everything.
I only slept until 9 on Sunday, because I thought we were going to the English church. But it turned out we didn't and so we went to the Brazilian church at 7:30...it's so much better now..I am starting to understand more Portuguese at church. I'm glad, because now I understand the sermon!!!
Well, I should go, someone else wants to use the computer. Hope you have a great evening, and take care. Thanks for your prayers.
Love, Ash